


A Clay Jensen destruction story

by Minkey222



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV), Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher
Genre: Angst, Clay needs help, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Paranoia, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, honestly, my son - Freeform, not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 14:13:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10743339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minkey222/pseuds/Minkey222
Summary: He can pinpoint the moment when he realised he was in too deep.  When he realised maybe he had gone too far into this hole and he’d never make it out again. It isn’t what you think. This moment isn’t monumental, it’s not sudden; the realisation didn’t slap him in the face. It was silent and slow and the build up went unnoticed like a gas leak. It was something so gradual that you didn’t even realise it was there until everything blew up. It didn’t seem that big to him.Maybe he should have found it ironic that he was sitting next to her grave when Hannah Baker sat next to him on the bench.





	A Clay Jensen destruction story

**Author's Note:**

> fun. Please respond

He can pinpoint the moment when he realised he was in too deep.  When he realised maybe he had gone too far into this hole and he’d never make it out again. It isn’t what you think. This moment isn’t monumental, it’s not sudden; the realisation didn’t slap him in the face. It was silent and slow and the build up went unnoticed like a gas leak. It was something so gradual that you didn’t even realise it was there until everything blew up. It didn’t seem that big to him.

Maybe he should have found it ironic that he was sitting next to her grave when Hannah Baker sat next to him on the bench.

He didn’t realise until he looked into her eyes and she looked back that his explosion had already begun.

He marked that as the day that Hannah came back. Why she came back, he doesn’t know. Maybe to haunt him, maybe to remind him. Maybe he should have been worried. He wasn’t. He should have been concerned but by this point he had been seeing her everywhere-  bleeding out, crying, running away- that seeing her content sat next to him didn’t seem like such a monumental moment. Maybe it should have been.

Maybe he should have brought it up to Tony on the way home, but he didn’t. He didn’t think it would be the kind thing to do and so he kept his mouth shut and his mind of the fleeting face of a dead girl.

The wind is cool on his face and for a second he doesn’t realise he’s holding his breath. His vision’s restricting as he stares at the pale face in the rear-view mirror, the wavy hair, the gaunt shadows and the blood, there is so much blood; it’s getting everywhere and, God, she’s dying, she’s dying, she’s-

“Clay.” Tony snaps his fingers in front of his face. His breath releases. His heart pounds in his chest, hitting the bones of his ribcage like a xylophone, his arteries are playing percussion in the symphony of his minds. Stealing a glance to the back seat he notices it’s empty.

“You with me, Clay?” He looks at Tony.

“Yeah, I’m with you,” he looks out the window again. The wind hits him in the face, it grounds him to that moment whilst he’s trying to ignore the bloodstain in the back of the car.

So yeah. Maybe, he should have said something then.

But he didn’t.

* * *

 

The tapes were an ordeal. They were left to destroy him and the others. To strip them all bare and pin them out on display like the frogs you dissect in Biology. To destroy their souls just like each of them did to Hannah. She reversed the game onto them to make them realise just how much their actions hurt her. Checkmate. She played the game and she won the lot.

At least, hearing her voice made him feel that way.

Hannah doesn’t walk around- she’s dead, his mind tells him, she can’t walk- much anymore. He sees her occasionally but she hasn’t sat next to him like she did after he was left alone at the graveyard. She doesn’t visit and other than seeing her whilst listening to the tapes, he hasn’t seen her since- not in the way he did before at least.

Doesn’t make anything easier, though, does it?

He still hears the roaring in his ears as he stood up so high above the world on that cliff. Her gentle caress of

‘helmet’

Still holding his hand.

Like hell, he didn’t belong on that list. Of course, he belonged on the list, Hannah just didn’t want to admit it. Didn’t want to break it to him that of fucking course, he belonged on that list because guess what? He killed Hannah Baker.

“How do I live with that?”

“You don’t. You fucking jump off that cliff like the loser you are, Clay,”

His heart stopped in that moment. Even the stars held their breath as he listened to the words slip out of Tony’s mouth.

“What?”

His mouth is dry as he looks at Tony.

“I said, any way you can, Clay.”

Tony’s eyes are pleading him to step away from the edge so he does.

Maybe he should have said something then but his hands shook just a bit too much and his words stuck in his throat and he thinks that maybe this is Hannah’s revenge. So he stays quiet and pretends that his gaze isn’t stuck on the long drop down and that his body already feels like he took that step off the edge.

* * *

 

It’s been months since the trials ended. Since the tapes ended. Since everybody knew everything about everybody. Since everybody knew the truth about Hannah Baker and why he life ended. Everybody’s lives seemed to snap back into place but it didn’t for him.

No, for him, it only seemed to get worse and the explosion was growing.

It started slowly. It was in the way that his mind seemed to trick him. He heard words that nobody said. He said words that nobody ever seems to hear. He sees Hannah around every corner. His heart beats in time to the headache that pounds constantly in his skull.

For everybody else, time continued like nothing had happened, but everything had happened. For everybody else, time passed them by like the blurred view out of a side window in a car that’s pushing 60 on a highway. But for Clay time seemed to stop. The clocks stopped ticking and the minutes stopped counting up. His heart doesn’t beat and it beats too fast at the same time. His mouth is always dry.

From the moment he pressed play on that stupid stereo he pressed pause on everything else.

That’s when he should have noticed something was wrong. Something was wrong in the way that he started to blackout for longer and longer times like someone had taken over his body like a puppet on its strings. Something was wrong in the way he’d see things. He’d see Hannah, he’d see her blood, her dying on the floor alone. Something was wrong in the way that he could barely look at the bathtub in his bathroom without wanting to throw up because all he can see is the blood marbling the pearly white.

It wasn’t his bathroom but it might as well have been.

But most of all, he should have known something was wrong in the way his brain would force him to watch himself die.

That habit he seemed to pick up started when his Mum handed him his pills. She said that they’d help him sleep. He didn’t seem to be doing a lot of that recently. So, of course, he took the little orange bottle straight up to his bathroom, he stood in front of the mirror; his reflection looked _different_ \- popped the lid off and he poured a couple into his hand. And then another. And another. He kept adding them one by one until he had almost the entire container full in his grip and without even a moments thought he put them in his mouth dry and gagged them down, his throat burning, his eyes sliding shut and-

His gaze snapped back up the mirror as he poured the pills back in the bottle and placed it back on the side of the sink.

Yeah, in that moment he should have known something was wrong, but Hannah whispered in his ear at night telling him how he’s not going insane.

He trusts Hannah even though he knows he shouldn’t. It’s only because he wants to make it up to her.

* * *

 

The day that everything seems to fall apart isn’t anything special. It was a Tuesday. He stopped by the Baker’s pharmacy after school. They always want to thank him for the help he gave in Hannah’s trial. He feels like he doesn’t deserve the thanks since Hannah’s eyes alway bore into the back of his skull.

He picks up some candy and he pays for it. He never even notices the way that his pocket is heavier.

He never even notices how time jumps around him.

He gets home. It’s quiet. No one else is home. He’s alone- well, it’s him and Hannah. But Hannah has never truly said anything to him. She has never talked to him directly. He’s never talked to her either. That’s why it’s a shock when she asks him what he’s doing.

His pen freezes mid-letter, his concentration slipping away from his work.

He knows he shouldn’t have answered back, he knows that it wouldn’t have ended well.

But he did.

They talked and they talked and he never noticed how the time slipped by. He never noticed as the timer started to run out.

He didn’t notice until he was forced to.

He thought he fell asleep, he thought he had been talking to Hannah, he thought-

It didn’t matter what he thought because now he was starting to realise that maybe he should have seen something earlier because now he’s sat alone in his bedroom, no Hannah in sight, and he has so, so many rips in his flesh that he can hardly tell where one ends and where one begins. It makes him want to vomit, but he doesn’t.

In this moment he can’t decide if he’s more scared of the fact this happened or his apathy towards it all.

He doesn’t know.

So he stands up, he walks the bathroom and locks the door behind him. The house is silent, empty with the space that nighttime brings. He’s completely alone, this time.

He reaches up to get something, anything to fix himself with. Anything to mop up the blood, but that’s when he sees it. The orange bottle. He looks at it for a second and then it’s in his hand and his throat starts to burn again and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe-

There are six pills in his hand when he comes back to reality.

He wants them as far away from him as he can, so he drops them.

He shouldn’t have done that because now he can see the bathtub in the mirror.

That’s the moment that everything shatters around him.

He watches disjointedly in the mirror as he sees himself get into the bath. He doesn’t even move as the phantom hand takes the razor blade to his wrist. He doesn’t breathe as he watches himself bleed out in the bathtub behind him.

But once it’s over he can’t stand still any longer.

His breath escapes him as he runs and he runs and he runs and he tries to ignore the way that his mind shows him every way that he could die as he runs.

A car passes by him, his body lurches as he throws himself under it-

He keeps running.

He passes a lake and his breath jumps out of his lungs as he is drowning, he is drowning, he claws at the water-

He keeps running.

He keeps running and running and running- and he’s at the cliff and he is so, so empty, and so, so tired and so he sits, and he feels the air rush around him as he falls and falls and falls-

The earth is course beneath him as he keeps sitting.

But he doesn’t feel anything.

He feels absolutely nothing as he watches the sun rise over the town.

It’s pretty.

He thinks that this would be a good time to die. The warm glow of the sun washing over everything as he leans forwards and-

He stays sitting still.

* * *

 

He should have known they would have looked for him.

He should have known they would have seen the mess and they would look for him.   
He can hardly tell how long it has been since he sat down here but now the sun is up in the sky and he can hear the purr of Tony’s mustang behind him.

He still can’t bring himself to feel something.

“Hey, Clay, why don’t you just jump off, you coward?”

Tony’s voice stings and the vitriol drips like the blood from his arms. His hand's clench, his jaw rolls, the cuts reopen and the sting- oh the sting and-

“Clay, get back from there, please,” And Tony sounds like Tony again. He risks his head turning and he’s stood a metre away. He turns back and he looks down and he starts to fall and fall and-

The floor isn’t underneath him anymore.

But there is an arm around him, so strong and so secure all he wants to do is cry because he hasn’t had this in so, so long.

“Jesus, Clay,” Is all Tony says. And it is so simple and so Tony because Clay always messes things up and oh, God, he can’t breathe and the sobs get caught in his throat and-

Tony’s arm tightens around him.

This time Hannah isn’t there.


End file.
